Light Horse: A History of Australia’s Mounted Arm   Written by: Jean Bou,  Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2009, ISBN: 9780521197083, 360pp. Reviewed by: John Donovan Jean Bou has written a useful institutional history, which focuses on the roles, development and eventual decline of the Australian mounted arm from colonial times until the last horsed regiment was disbanded. Descriptions of battles are used to illustrate points in the discussion, not as the principal focus of the narrative. Dr Bou …

Captain Bullen’s War: The Vietnam War Diary of Captain John Bullen    Written by: Paul Ham (ed),  Harper Collins, Pymble, 2009. ISBN: 9780732288433, 474pp. Reviewed by: Bob Hall Captain John Bullen was posted to Vietnam as the OC of the 1st Topographical Survey Troop, part of the 1st Australian Task Force at Nui Dat. To brief his successor on developments, and to inform his family of his activities there, he kept a diary. The diaries were edited by Paul Ham into a lively account of Bullen’s Vietnam tour. …

The Strategy of Terrorism – How it Works and Why it Fails   Written by: Peter R Neumann and Michael LR Smith,  Routledge, London, 2008, ISBN: 9780415545266, 140pp. Reviewed by: Major Jason Harley This book is a valuable contribution to military studies. Terrorism is a most misunderstood term in both society and academia, and for military practitioners equally so. While the book explores the strategic aspects of terrorism in first principles, it is written in a simple clear manner. It unearths a number of …

‘Sorry, lads, but the order is to go’ – The August Offensive, Gallipoli: 1915   Written by: David W Cameron,  UNSW Press, Sydney, 2009, ISBN: 9781742230771, 370pp. Reviewed by: Rhys Crawley After the months of stalemate that followed the failed Gallipoli landings, the Allied high command began to look for new options. They decided to mount a breakout manoeuvre from the Anzac sector to seize the northern heights and eventually cross the peninsula. At the same time there was a new landing at Suvla Bay which …

Abstract Army’s doctrine is absolutely certain of the importance of close combat. Land Warfare Doctrine 1  (LWD–1) in fact describes close combat as Army’s fundamental skill—is this true? Is the doctrinal focus of close combat reflected in the training areas and schools of the Army? The anecdotal evidence is that it is not. An examination of recent works on distributed manoeuvre identifies the essential characteristics of any close combat training ‘system’. Training close combat is at the forefront of …

Abstract The complexity of modern warfare makes decision difficult to achieve. Conventional wisdom holds that, when fighting insurgents and other asymmetric actors, wars will be long and costly struggles that simply pit political wills against each other in a Clausewitzian kind of grey clash of ... moral masses’. In this article, the authors reject this fatalist view and posit that, with the right skill sets, Western commanders may possibly be able to restore their ability to achieve decision on the modern …

Abstract The article gathers together a collection of thoughts on command from the perspective of a brigade commander. Most will not be new. They are aimed at commanding officers, though some will resonate with more junior commanders. The article has been derived from a speech delivered at the 2008 and 2009 pre-command courses in Canungra by the then Brigadier Stephen Day. I worked with ten different commanding officers while I was a brigade commander. They were the ablest of soldiers. We learnt much in …

Abstract In response to a recent essay in the Australian Army Journal,  which continued the current debate about ‘Cultural Awareness’, this article examines the place of the Australian soldier in the community. 1 It questions whether it is counterproductive to remove the soldier from the very community that could teach him the valuable skills in human relations he needs on operations. The author draws examples from current recruiting and accommodation practices, pre-deployment training, recent operations …

Listed below is a selection from the review copies that have arrived at the Australian Army Journal.  Reviews for many of these books can be found online in the relevant edition of the Australian Army Journal  at:  http://www.defence.gov.au/army/lwsc/Australian_Army_Journal.asp •  North Korea on the Brink ,  Glyn Ford with Soyoung Kwon, Pluto Press, ISBN 9780745325989, 249 pp. (Distributed in Australia by Palgrave Macmillan) •  Reporting the War: Freedom of the Press from the American Revolution to the War …

Abstract This article examines the limitations of traditional strategic approaches to the resolution of contemporary conflicts. It proposes control as the unifying idea for military action. Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate... –  Clausewitz Isaiah Berlins famous essay The Hedgehog and the Fox 1   was an examination of the work of Leo Tolstoy that rested on an observation from the ancient Greek poet Archilocus that ‘the fox knows many things but …